Sen. Kamala Harris is set to release a new book about her life and her prescriptions for the country, the latest in a series of steps that signal a possible 2020 presidential run.
The California Democrat’s book, titled “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” is scheduled to be published by Penguin Press on January 9. That’s a little more than a year from the Iowa caucuses and within the time window that presidential candidates have historically launched their campaigns.
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Announcing the book Tuesday, Penguin said it is “about the core truths that unite us, and the long struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act upon them, in her own life and across the life of our country.”
It’s the second book by Harris. The first, “Smart on Crime,” was published in 2009 – the year before she was elected California attorney general. Harris won her Senate seat in 2016.
Publishing books is a rite of passage for presidential prospects. Harris is the latest possible Democratic contender to publish a book since the 2016 presidential election. She joins former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro’s book is expected this fall, and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who published a book last year, has another one – titled “Where We Go From Here” – due after November’s midterm elections.
Penguin said that in the book Harris is “reckoning with the big challenges we face together, drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her.”
“Through the arc of her own life, on into the great work of our day, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values,” Penguin said. “In a book rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively small number of people work very hard to convince a great many of us that we have less in common than we actually do, but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good work of living our common truth. When we do, our shared effort will continue to sustain us and this great nation, now and in the years to come.”
